Plz Help me choose a distro.

[CaptainDangeax]

Thanks for you overwhelming response. I've got nothing against Ubuntu but I've had bad experience. Back in 2009, I has some version of Ubuntu which was cool. I really liked it. But I used to get some sorta of error like "missing repositories"every time I tried to install through Package Manager that looks like Google Play Store. And someone suggested me to get the latest version 12.04 (a few months ago). I download iso, burn and install. And damn. Where are the missing preferences? No way! Look Windows Control Panel and Ubuntu's System Settings: Windows provide a lot of option to make it the way I want but nothing in Ubuntu (its all sucked up). And Ubuntu was supposed to be more customizable! I know that all those can be done via Terminal (Command Prompt's Ubuntu counterpart) but I'm not a geek. A Physics Undergrad - I like GUI better. And some guy told me that's because of Unity. I don't know what it is.

As my friend suggested I started with Fedora, but after reading your comments - looks like I'll either go for Mint or OpenSuSE. And will those distro work on my machine which runs x32 and x86 but not x64? And I got a new distro called Mandriva that looks cool. So finally. Which one should I go for: OpenSUSE? Mandriva? or Mint?

I vote for Mint. When you run on Windows, you have a windows kernel, and a windows interface you can't change. When you run Linux, Linux is the kernel ; you also have Xorg which manage the display, keyboard and mouse, and over this a window manager, which present your programs and options with different approaches. You tryed Ubuntu 12.04 and felt loss in Unity, the current Ubuntu window manager. You're not the only one. Using Ubuntu for years, I switched to LinuxMint. Why ? Because it's based on Ubuntu, I can use the Ubuntu repositories to get a LOT of softwares. Because it's based on Ubuntu, I can also install closed programs like Steam for example like I would do in original Ubuntu. But because it's Mint, I can also use different window managers, like Cinnamon which is great, but also XFCE. I had a look at XFCE recently on one of my friend's very low setup, and it runned like a breeze, nice looking, a lot of parameters, and no need to console. If your setup can 64bits and has 1GB of RAM, go 64bits. To know how, install CPU-Z under your current windows and look for EM64_T or AMD64 capability.

x86 and x32 are the same thing, it means 80x86 Intel architecture running in 32 bit mode. On the other side AMD64, x64, EM64_T and x86_64 refer to an Intel or AMD running in 64 bits mode.

[Eddy_Em]

- Chrome. It is a must. All my bookmarks, extensions are synced to my gmail account. I'm comfortable with Chrome cuz I've been using it for 2 years now and can work with 'least possible clicks.'

It's the worst browser: ugly, fat and untunable. Firefox is better.

- A good plotter. A software that can do graphs for me.

Look for MathGL or gnuplot. With both you can also work in Octave.

- Office Suite.

I don't know such soft. LibreOffice is ****, other "offices" are worse.

- pdf reader

xpdf, okular (very slowly, but sometimes its better)

- LATEX or TEX editor.

Geany, kile, mcedit and so on.

- 7zip

It's in all distros

- Music and Video (it should play mp3. Ubuntu doesn't support mp3 or DVD video). And good video converter.

music: deadbeef, audacious (+ "ugly" plugins for bad formats)
video: mplayer
good video converter: mencoder, ffmpeg

- bittorrent client.

can't say (I don't use it because torrents don't work through triple proxy)

- Stable.

Debian, Slackware

[annadaprasad]

- Chrome. It is a must. All my bookmarks, extensions are synced to my gmail account. I'm comfortable with Chrome cuz I've been using it for 2 years now and can work with 'least possible clicks.'

It's the worst browser: ugly, fat and untunable. Firefox is better.

- A good plotter. A software that can do graphs for me.

Look for MathGL or gnuplot. With both you can also work in Octave.

- Office Suite.

I don't know such soft. LibreOffice is ****, other "offices" are worse.

- pdf reader

xpdf, okular (very slowly, but sometimes its better)

- LATEX or TEX editor.

Geany, kile, mcedit and so on.

- 7zip

It's in all distros

- Music and Video (it should play mp3. Ubuntu doesn't support mp3 or DVD video). And good video converter.

music: deadbeef, audacious (+ "ugly" plugins for bad formats)
video: mplayer
good video converter: mencoder, ffmpeg

- bittorrent client.

can't say (I don't use it because torrents don't work through triple proxy)

- Stable.

Debian, Slackware

The thing I love about Chrome is that it syncs with my gmail account. I can just log in and get all my extensions plugins and bookmarks and I in minute I'm up and all setup in my comfortable environment. And I tried firefox continuously for a month because Chrome had bad buggy update a few months ago causing Adobe Flash to crash. And I found out that I do work in Chrome with lesser clicks than firefox. Even Opera beats firefox for me. But Chrome is the best.

[Eddy_Em]

I don't like chrome for two big reasons: it haven't a "magic ticks" making it looks pretty (don't show ugly colors & ugly fonts of sites) and it eats memory like a black hole.

[Kuriouskat]

Since you're coming from a Ubuntu/ W8 mix my recommendations in this order would be:
1) PCLOS it is 32 bit anyway which is what you seem to need. Also, it comes with most of your multimedia ready to go like Mint, and with the KDE Desktop you'll get Okular (pdf) & ktorrent. You may need to get Chromium from their repos it just like Chrome & will Sync.
This distro is written for & is ideal for newbies to Linux or those that just don't have the time to mess with it.

2)Opensuse(the one I use) I only recommend this one if you're prepared to mess around with it a little. Main thing to remember about Opensuse is that to use Multimedia you must use the Packman Repoository.
Hope that helps Ya!
One more thing Welcome to Linux Forums!

[jayd512]

Mint is a great way to go for a Linux newcomer. It has a wealth of software installed by default. This includes codecs for multimedia, various Office apps (it might even have Open Office or Libre Office), and Chrome is easy to obtain. No worries, there.
Bittorrent clients are usually installed as well. Either Ktorrent or Transmission (love that one!)

Burn some LiveCDs and play with them. Or use a LiveUSB. That's honestly the only way that you'll find what looks and feels right for you.
Maybe set up a virtual machine in VirtualBox. Great way to fiddle around with the system.

[annadaprasad]

So, finally I decided to go for Mandriva. Its up and working for me like a charm. Iḿ loving every part of it. Thank you guys for your help.

[velikij]

Welcome to the Linux world!

As for 32-bit and 64-bit software: it's clear your PC is a 32-bit system, which can't run 64-bit software. A 64-bit CPU can run either 32-bit or 64-bit programs. Most distros have both 32 and 64-bit versions.

I agree with previous posters that you should stay away from Slackware and Gentoo and other distros which need a lot of time to learn about Linux internals and utilities. Slackware is fairly hard to install properly and doesn't have a really intelligent package management program. Gentoo's philosophy is to provide packages in source form, so you are encouraged to compile the programs yourself.

Tarballs can in general be installed in any distro, but some might be targeted for a particular distro. A tarball is a compressed archive of the files needed by a program, and it is installed with the 'tar' program. A tarball may not contain all the libraries and other files needed by the program, so trying to install such a program may require finding another tarball containing the required libraries. Package management systems generally keep track of dependencies.

Red Hat and distros related to it use .rpm files, and package managers such as rpm (command line) and yum (graphic) are used for installing and removing packages.

Debian and distros derived from it, such as Ubuntu and Mint, use .deb files, and package manager such as apt-get and aptitude (both command-line) and synaptic (graphic). Recent Ubuntu versions have the Ubuntu Software Center for installing programs.

Also, most distros have a facility for notifying the user when updates are needed. Updates are usually swift, unlike in MS Windows.

If you're considering keeping Windows, do a little research first. I only have experience with Windows up to XP. In general, it's a good idea to remove stuff you don't need, and to defrag the file system. Linux installers generally have a facility for compacting your Windows file system to provide space for the Linux file system(s). Linux provides drivers for reading Windows files, and drivers are available for Windows to read Linux files - those come from various sources, available on the WWW.

I personally mainly use Xubuntu - Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop, which is simple to use but much more useful than the hated Unity! I also use Debian and Solus, which is also based on Debian. In the past I've used Slackware, early versions of Red Hat, Fedora (which I think of as the consumer version of Red Hat), Mint, and Fuduntu (based on Fedora).

[Kuriouskat]

So, finally I decided to go for Mandriva. Its up and working for me like a charm. Iḿ loving every part of it. Thank you guys for your help.

Good Choice!! I've had experience with it you won't be sorry!

[jarome]

I am an OpenSUSE fan. They have great support for bugs, and yast2 does everything for you in a gui. And they have one-click install for most programs.